My parents urged me to be patient when I confessed I didnt love Sarah, insisting I should wait. But where did all that waiting lead me?
Marriage to Sarah was a waking nightmare. She was demanding, loud, yet my father had chosen her for methe daughter of an old friend, deemed my perfect match. With no other prospects and already thirty, I had little choice but to wed. Sarah ruled our marriage, bending every moment to her plans and whims. First came one child, then another, just as shed orchestrated.
Life trudged on through hardship and failure, littered with wretched moments that twisted it into a living hell. I despised my wife, resented my children, and fought bitterly with her father. Divorce seemed the only escape, yet I doubted I could endure the fallout.
Mother always stood by me, though both she and Father insisted I wait, stay patient, as if age had granted them some secret wisdomone Id only grasp in time.
And so, the children grew and left. Sarah and I remain, worn into each other like old furniture. Weve made peace, grown accustomed, and now I cant imagine life without her. Moneys steady, neither rich nor poor. At last, weve found a quiet happiness, the kind that turns life into something almost fairy-tale. Were healthy, want for little, love without strife. Everything, against all odds, is as it should be. Theres nothing left to complain about.
It took us years to reach this point, but I wonderdo people ever truly feel happiness while buried under work and children and endless noise? Or does it creep in only in old age, like mine, when theres nowhere left to run and no reason to?
